Private Firm Plots Robotic Lunar Exploration

DeviceGuru writes "Astrobotic Technology has unveiled plans for a series of robotic expeditions to the Moon. The lunar rovers will explore high-interest areas of the Moon's surface and beam the data back to the Earth. The plan is to accumulate an extensive library of lunar data and sell it to governments and private corporations (PDF), much as Navteq's data forms the backbone of most terrestrial GPS services. Astrobotic's first goal is to win Google's $30 million Lunar X Prize, with a May, 2010 trip to the Apollo 11 landing site at Mare Tranquillitatis."

Comments

That's my moon!

[astrodoom]

I wonder how governments will attempt to regulate space once it becomes a truly commercial frontier (I mean aside from orbit). On the one hand, I'm against regulations on what is essentially just an un-owned patch of "space". On the other hand though...it'd be scary to have any company that can afford to send things to the moon or into space. I mean, that much equipment just floating around out there and something's bound to go catasrophically wrong.

Re:That's my moon!

[gregbot9000]

What will happen in space is you'll get a few large companies that get people to sign contracts with them that cover their cost to orbit. The cost will be so high it will put people so far in debt that they have to sign away their freedom, and work for the company as property for several generations.

A few will be able to earn their freedom. Those that earn their freedom will settle in cities and become merchants and prosper. These merchants power will come to rival the corporations which by that time will have become inefficient and corrupt, but the corps. will control the the law and use it to support their power.

This control will ultimately be challenged by a revolutions lead by the middling merchant class and made up of the poor contract workers around the year 2775.

The revolution will be successful and force everyone to follow the same laws, and turn the governing of the land over to the law which will be written in a representitive collective fashion, removing the power of corrupt officials to rule by mandate. Then everything will be peachy utile the wealthy discover that they can just buy the representitives who write the laws and create a system that benefits themselves handsomely, they will even learn that all they need to do to silence any criticism of that system is accuse it's critics of being a straw man called co-prosperitalism.

Re:That's my moon!

[mbone]

There is the Moon treaty, which we never signed, and the Outer Space treaty, which we did. (Pay careful attention to Article 8 of the OST, which says that terrestrial laws apply unless you start making stuff up there. I am convinced that in the fullness of time this will be an issue.)

There have been some other, more focused, agreements as well - a complete list is here.

AND they have a real plan to make money.

[RustinHWright]

I agree that this is the right team. But what's just as delightful, and make no mistake, delight is an understated way to describe what I think of this news, is that they're clearly thinking of this not as a "mission" but as a task set to bootstrap a business able to pay its own way. I particularly like that they're not using the oh-so-annoying sop of "space tourism". Afaic, "space tourism" is pretty much like twenties barnstorming. Iow, "we've got this amazing technology that we aren't using seriously at the moment so while we get our act in gear we'll kill time, keep ourselves busy, and make beer money giving people rides on our cool vehicles".

Personally, I've been pushing the idea of private organizations exploring with clusters of small robotic missions for years now, I've even ranted at my friends about it, so how could I not be pleased?

I wonder how long it will take for the mainstream media and legislators to claim that they've backed this approach all along

Re:How do they intend to keep their data secure?

[Whiteox]

Good point. I saw a documentary recently that detailed the work of 2 Italian brothers who made receiving dishes and captured satellite signals from 1959 onwards and could actually work out wavelengths by the size of the antenna on one if they saw a picture.
Eventually they flew to NASA in the mid 60s' who confirmed their findings. They were even able to determine if USSR/USA sent up any spy satellites etc just by scanning the RF.
I just can't find a link about them.

If it's not manned...

[Gonoff]

it can't be called exploration.

Machines are used to investigate. Self aware beings explore.

The human race stopped exploring the moon in 1972. Mars has been investigated, which is good, but never explored, which is not.

The reason that people with european ancestors can be found on every continent is because those ancestors explored. Minute fragments of culture from Europe are still to be found all over the "New World". Whether those 2 facts are a good thing or not is a separate debate.

If human culture and DNA is to survive, we need to explore. Finding out what is elsewhere is only a small part of it.

Re:If it's not manned...

[mbone]

Sure it can be. It just tends to be slow. In 5 Earth years, the Mars Exploration Rovers have been superb, but what they have done could have been done by a crew of human geologists in a few weeks or less. We could be doing that, we just chose to put our resources elsewhere.

There are plenty of other places in the solar system where humans are unlikely to go. The surface of Europa, a very interesting place, sits bathed in the Jovian radiation belts, for example, which would be fatal to an unprotected human in a matter of minutes and would fry even a hardened lander in a few weeks. Sounds like a good place for a robot to me.

Lunokhod 1 and 2

[mbone]

Lunkhod (or Lunakhod) 1 and 2 roved around on the Moon in the 1970's, with the second rover covering over 40 km (more than the current Mars Rovers combined).

Here are some pictures from the mission.

Lunkhod 2 has a laser retroreflector package that is used for laser laser ranging (LLR) along with 3 Apollo LLR retroreflector packages; these 4 sites together determine the Moon's orbit to the order of centimeters and are thus crucial in a number of scientific investigations ranging from pure physics to Lunar dynamics.

As a PS, I would strongly urge any exploration of the Apollo 11 site to stay well away from its LLR retroreflectors, as moving them by even a mm could cause problems interpreting that data.